Columnist Abbie Wightwick laments the end of her family break on a camp site in France

You know you’re back from holiday when the cat won’t speak to you, there’s no food in the fridge and all the plants in the garden are dead.

The flowers and pot plants which I have lovingly tended for months have been killed off by the heatwave which always coincides with the fortnight for which we pay a month’s wages to get away from the rain.

“We’re hungry” the teenagers say in chorus. They speak as one, like a three-headed angry beast which hasn’t been fed or watered for eight hours. Cooped up in a car without nourishment or exercise they have turned dangerous.

It’s been a long time since we drove off the ferry and even longer since we left a camp site in France happily scratching mosquito bites and chewing croissants.

It’s 11pm on a Sunday night so there’s no food to be bought anywhere. Even the 24-hour supermarket is shut. They stare in disbelief at the empty fridge shelves. No one feels hunger like a teenager.

It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments when they are totally silent and in total agreement. I savour the moment of sibling harmony but it’s short lived. Within minutes they realise something fatal has also happened to the wifi connection. It’s as if their life blood has been sucked from them. No food, no wifi. Even the cat looks scared now.

“Never mind, there was no wifi on the beach and you were perfectly happy,” I remind them, handing over mugs of tea with no milk.

Their stunned expressions tell me black Tetleys is no substitute for cocktails beside the pool.

Outside their father is doing battle with the bike rack blissfully unaware that there is no sustenance to be had at the end of it.

“I’ll help dad unload the car,” mutters the son.

“He’s only doing that because he thinks there are still some biscuits in the glove box, but we’ve eaten them all,” says one of his sisters.

We’ve never kept gloves in the glove box, and I’m not sure why anyone still calls it that, but he may find a Haribo rolled in dust there if he’s lucky. Last time I looked there were rotting sweets from the last five long journeys we’ve made.

It’s like a family food diary charting our journeys across Wales, England and France. The sherbert lemons are from Newquay, the fudge from Devon and the poshly-named “tender” chews are from a hypermarket in Brittany. The dull mints that no one wanted are from a motorway service station between locations. I should have thrown them out but they may come in useful one day if we’re caught starving in the car.

I imagine happy faces gratefully sucking on fossilised sweets after we’ve been stranded for three days in a freak blizzard on the M4.

When I mention this to the daughters they stare in alarm.

“You’re so weird,” says the oldest.

“I’m going to bed if there’s no wifi, nothing to eat and you’re being weird.”

She gives me one of those looks which make me want to use what my own mother calls “a tone of voice” but it’s a eureka moment in parenting. I have finally stumbled on the magic formula to get a teenager to go to bed before 2am in the holidays - deprive them of the basic ingredients needed for survival and you’ll have them eating out of your hand - metaphorically of course, as there is no food except tea bags.

The cat meanwhile has plenty of food but is refusing to eat it. We open sachet after sachet until we realise they must have gone off. The cat is clearly starving.

The sachets were left in the garden by my sister who had to break in over the garden wall to feed the cat while we were away.

The keys we had newly cut for her didn’t work so while the cat could scamper in and out of the house through its cat door she was unable to get in to feed it the mounds of special treat food we’d bought in to soften the blow of being left all alone.

Now we are all standing hungrily in the kitchen.

“We could defrost some bread?” suggests the husband, but his heart isn’t in it after dining for the last two weeks on pain au chocolat, fresh seafood, wine and baguettes.

There’s nothing for it but to go to bed and start again tomorrow.

HOME SWEETER HOME

Going abroad for a fortnight gives you a new perspective on where you live.

The teenagers discovered coming from Cardiff gained them street cred among the Euro teens on a French campsite.

The Dutch were jealous because they watch Doctor Who on the internet, and the French wanted to know if they knew Gareth Bale.

Finally someone handed us a newspaper cutting showing the findings from a European Union survey in 2012 which showed Cardiff came top in a study of where in Britain residents feel happiest.

Asked if they were happy to live in their home city 95% of people in Cardiff said yes compared with just 87% in London.

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